When you buy a Tech 2 Sport painfully hungover....

[mattmk1]

Cheers gents!

With the car now 'rolling' attention turned to getting it moving under it own steam....

Queue some hours with the wiring. Further tidying up still to come.

http://vid804.photobucket.com/albums/yy ... G_2632.mp4

I have wired in the EWS from the E36, mainly because i think its quite a neat and reliable security solution.

With the car moveable (albeit noisy due to a lack of rear silencer) it could finally go outside for its first proper bath in nearly 4 years.




Finishing touches to go

[mattmk1]

Last month we hit a momentous day. The Tech two passed its MOT, the first time it had been deemed road legal since 2007.

My dad kindly volunteered to take it to a local test centre on my behalf, and the car behaved perfectly for the short trip.

With most parts on the car now new or refurbished, the rest of this thread will now be finishing touches (barrring any disaster stories).

In celebration of its newly acquired DVLA status, i took my mum for a spin down the road, and immediately gained complaints regarding the rocking chair motion of the passenger seat!

I pulled the interior out, stripped the front seats and found the usual missing and loose screws in the seat back.



I also found the seat frame had snapped on the base, and unfortunately the same master mechanic who repaired the chassis with tiger seal seemed to have done the same to the interior.

I managed to peel the seat clothe/foam away far enough to sneak the welder in.




Now solid, but grubby from the resto work...





I stole the wet Vax from home and spent a day scrubbing...





New BMW badges arrived to finish off the bonnet/boot.




If anybody has the correct cloth to replace the bolster material on my drivers seat, can you please drop me a message?

I think im going to keep the OEM interior.

Thanks,

[tomson]

Those seats are not OEM for a tech 2 car, they're tech 1 seats..,

[mattmk1]

Hmm i suspected the same to begin with. But then i was told that due to the car being an 88 build, it was blend of tech two/tech1. I.E using up whatever they had lying around at the factory.

[tomson]

Who knows, I've certainly never seen a facelift car with houndstooth though.
Have you got the build sheet for the car? That'll show the options & upholstry codes to be sure.
I personally doubt it would have come like that new and the rest of the car is so nice it deserves a proper interior

[mattmk1]

Good shout, i just checked the build details...

Color Delphin Metallic - 184
Upholstery Anthrazit Stoff - 0269
Production Plant MUNICH

My rudimentary german suggests anthracite cloth?? Would that be houndtooth or was there another variant?

[tomson]

0269 is facelift type anthracite cloth so not the houndstooth you have

[tomson]

It's a dark grey with black diagonal stripe, I expect you know the style?

[mattmk1]

Ohhh yeah i know it...its actually my least favourite interior haha so i might have to go for leathers instead.

Ill repair the houndstooth set and move them on, if i can sort the bolster its a very nice set of seats.

[Mr-Lachs]

Well done ! Utterly stonking build, a genuine credit to you mate !!

[e30325itourer]

[emagnus]

Hey dude whats the status on your effort? Did you finish that baby?

[Ecosse-E30]

great lunchtime read, lovely !!

[mattmk1]

Thanks everyone

The E30 has been laid up over winter in storage, but now that spring threatens us with occasional sunshine, i have a few items on the to.do list.

The Eibachs id previously fitted were 'new used' but after driving the car the rears felt far too soft, the car was squatting really badly under acceleration so iv now swapped to a set of H&R Dampers.




The interior is all now in, barring a decision on wether to swap to leathers (if i can find a nice set) or try to track down an alternative (z4M seats? or something on those lines).



The car then needs a bloody good clean and detail, iv never actually finished with the paint.



Other than that, remaining jobs are:

Tidy wiring in engine bay
Wire in electric fans
Refurb wheels
Possibly source or build a stainless exhaust
Rear Diff - rebuild or Z4M swap (current diff seems ok but im reluctant to put miles on it as its been off the road for so long....
M50 Manifold swap once iv put a few 'running in miles' on the car.



The E30 then completes my 3 series collection with these two...



But one of them has to go in Summer

[mattmk1]

Beautiful day earlier so i trimmed down the excess wiring....



And gave her a damn good bath....



I can feel a photoshoot coming on, just waiting on a wheel refurb!

[gaszman]

if you decide to move on the houndstooth as i have a tech 1 could use some spare bits

[mattmk1]

Sure, ill bare it in mind. Seems a few people are after houndstooth interiors.

[mattmk1]

Little Update on the E30.

I had kind of rushed the paint work on the wing mirrors in order to get the car MOT'ed, and frankly they looked terrible in the nooks and crannys:



So i picked up a spare pair, stripped them completely and did a proper job of painting them up:




I then started to give the car a detail/mop/polish/finish the paintwork off, here iv done the passenger side 3rd of the bonnet.




Here the bonnet is finished off:



And started to get a nice shine down the sides:




I use the 3M pads and compounds, have done for years and i guess people stick to what they know. I treated the car to a coat of meguiars wax and took some shots in the Murky June weather:









Before the alpina hate begins...they are only on whilst i get the BBS's refurbed.....although i have to admit they are growing on me




Fan still to wire, parcel shelf to sort, interior to tidy but its near enough there.

Cheers,
Matt

[AndyE30]

Nice, kept up with this over the years, Always wondered about the painted mirrors - looks to me as if it would scape off paint where 'head meats the base' as you fold them in/out?

[mattmk1]

No there is plenty of clearance. They are a bit of a faff to strip down into component form, so the old set i simply painted the best i could, whilst they remained complete. Obviously you cant get a lot of paint into the 'hidden' areas though so it looked scrappy.

The second set i stripped which involved removing the plastic rivets that hold them together from factory and then finding a way to re fasten after the paint.

[ah]

Very nice,I not a lover of after market wheels at all,but pina reps really set an E30 off.

[andysheep]

Well done lovely car the mirrors gave me nightmares i had to recoulor mine white ,i searched uk and us web sites and couldnt find anyway to split them and repaint so i mounted them on a pole so i could spin them around as i sprayed them and luck and lotsa coats of paint got the job done

[mattmk1]

If you pop out the mirror glass you can see 5 plastic rivets which hold the mirror casing to the metal structure of the mirror itself.

I ran a 5 mm drill bit through the plastic rivets to break them free, and when it came to reassembly, used a strong PU bonding adhesive between the remains of the rivet and the metal structure. Bit of a faff but i only intend on doing it once!



Wired the fans in at the weekend so now have two speed fans working off the temp switch. Runs quite warm in traffic so may swap to a lower temp fan switch.

[mattmk1]

Iv just found a load of old photos of this resto so ill try and add some up over the next week or two to my existing posts!

Thanks all for the kind comments to date!

[brutus]

this is a brilliant lookin car ,, much credit deserved here ! & YES i do have good bolsters & houndstooth fabric available as always ! - 07773380607.

[andysheep]

I swear i sore this for sale today on scumtree ,please tell me im wrong matt!

[mattmk1]

Oh really? Nah im not selling, i need a few years use out of it first.

If i counted up the hours id also need to sell it for a few million quid to break even haha.

[mattmk1]

Toward the end of last year we managed our first BMW meet, which was local to me and advertised on one of the M3 forums.

The car got some very kind comments, and a snapper took these:

[andysheep]

So pleased to hear it matt its far to good to sell,no suprise you have had good comments shes a great car,my first one come home from oz was that colour,i loved it,but it went to china a long time ago kept my third ,fourth and fith ones thou best of luck.been waiting for you to poke ya head up to tell me it wasnt yours for sale....

[mattmk1]

We all know these cars are never finished, so spent the last few weeks tidying up a few issues with the car. Now clocked up 1k miles since it returned to the road!

Had a small piece of luck in tracking down one of the missing pieces -






So pleased as it really made a huge difference to the car, funny how sometimes its the small things.



Took her out to blow the winter cobwebs off,



And whilst stopping to take that picture, noticed the smell of fuel and a nice puddle forming under the tank.

Back in the garage and tank out, sadly the build sheet was unreadable



Filler pipe has obviously seen better days,



And a nice hole in the tank filler



So parts ordered, awaiting delivery.

[Ajsingh]

Just read this whole thread... it is epic! Well done for tracking down all that rot & repairing it!

I have a major soft spot for tech 2's in delphin grey. Beautiful car mate

[mattmk1]

I hadnt logged into this site for probably two years, and then suddenly remembered i had a build thread.

Cant believe i bought this car in summer 2010, nearly ten years ago already....longest iv ever owned a car!

Its great being able to look back at the car coming together and the work carried out, if anyone is putting together a project, make sure you chronicle it, its a great read decades down the line!

Good work to the zone for keeping these threads possible!

[Gert_8]

Great thread and good to hear from you. Have you done anything else to it over the 10 years...?

[mattmk1]

Nothing special to be honest, mostly basic maintenance. It has spent a lot of time in storage so probably covered less than 10k miles since it regained road legal status.

The last big job was a new fuel tank, fuel pump, fuel pipes and fuel filler. I think that went in during early 2018.

Rocker cover gasket sprung a serious leak not long after, so swapped coils and did a few improvements to the engine breather system at the same time.

I fitted a set of Micelin Pilot Sports in summer 2018 and they really transformed the car.

I picked up an M50 inlet manifold last week so ill fit that soon. I had been thinking about turbo conversions but with the M52 it feels really nicely balanced with the power/drive ability so ill leave it N/A. Probably deserves a remap once the M50 inlet is fitted so was refinding the zone to look for recommendations

[Gert_8]

Hahahah. Well done. It’s been keeping you busy.